Trent Dilfer is getting another chance at UAB. Is there reason to think he can turn it around?

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Trent Dilfer was hopeful his second season as a college coach would be better.

Instead, his team went 3-9 as the campaign turned into a nightmare on and off the field. It was the worst season of UAB football since 2013 when Garrick McGee went 2-10 and was promptly fired.

The season featured self-inflicted public relations blunders, a six-game losing streak and three losses by more than 30 points. In November, Dilfer, 52, was sidelined for a few days, though he did not miss a game, after undergoing a cervical fusion procedure, which required a surgeon to slice open Dilfer’s throat to repair his spine and relieve debilitating, constant nerve pain.

“It was horrific. I was going crazy,” Dilfer said in an interview with The Athletic. “It was like my bones were on fire. A spot in my left shoulder blade felt like a hot knife was being stuck in it.”

As the losses mounted, crowds shrank at Protective Stadium, UAB’s $175 million home stadium that opened in 2021.

A column in the local paper called the program “the worst in college football” and called for the university to clean house in the athletic department.

“The football program, I believe, is in disarray,” said Vincent Curtis, a 1997 UAB graduate who has supported the program for more than two decades. “I’m on social media. I speak to a lot of fans. We just do not have any confidence in the leadership in the athletic department or the football program.”

At season’s end, athletic director Mark Ingram announced plans to retain the former Super Bowl-winning quarterback, declining to make a change that would have cost the university $3.6 million.

It was a controversial decision but not a surprising one considering Ingram’s consistent support of his unconventional hand-picked hire plucked from the high school ranks two years ago.

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Dilfer professed optimism because of players returning who “despite the circumstances, at the end of the year played their best football, played hard and showed grit,” he said.

Dilfer’s 2025 recruiting class has six signed prospects and ranks 133rd nationally in the 247Sports Composite, behind three FCS programs and every American Athletic Conference program but one: Army. The program lost 29 players to the transfer portal since it opened on Dec. 9, more than any team in the AAC. Nine signed with Power 4 programs.

It did welcome 21 transfers, highlighted by Kent State’s leading tackler Josh Baka, an FCS All-American from Nicholls State in linebacker Eli Ennis and UTEP’s leading rusher Jevon Jackson. Quarterback Jalen Kitna, who took over for injured starter Jacob Zeno early last season, returns.

“I had no say in the process of keeping me,” Dilfer said. “But I’m super fired up that I get a chance to fix this.”

UAB football is a young but proud program that began play as a Division I program in 1996. It was shut down in 2014 in a cost-savings measure but rose from the dead six months later. After a hiatus that lasted two seasons, coach Bill Clark led the program to five bowl games in six seasons, the best run in school history. Back issues pushed Clark into a sudden retirement in June 2022, but his work set up a move in 2023 to the American, the most accomplished and most difficult non-power conference.

Ingram elected to hire Dilfer, rather than hand the program to interim coach Bryant Vincent, a trusted assistant under Clark, despite Vincent coaching the Blazers to a 7-6 season in 2022.

Ingram was steadfast in his belief in Dilfer, who won two state titles in four years at Lipscomb Academy in Nashville and served as lead coach at Elite 11 for high-level QB prospects. After his NFL career, including the 2000 championship with the Baltimore Ravens, ended in 2008, he’d spent nearly a decade at ESPN.

Ingram said he didn’t hear much criticism of the hire but scoffed at the idea of skepticism.

“Critics will always be there no matter who you hire,” he said.

Dilfer was hired four days before Deion Sanders at Colorado, with both programs turning to familiar but inexperienced faces with NFL bona fides to lead their programs, though Sanders spent three seasons at Jackson State in the FCS before being hired to lead the Buffs.

This offseason, Norfolk State hired former NFL quarterback Michael Vick and Delaware State turned to former NFL receiver DeSean Jackson despite each having little or no coaching experience.

Ingram didn’t set out to find Dilfer, but the two connected with a few conversations during the season after Clark’s retirement, and Ingram found himself buying into Dilfer’s vision for the program.

“He’s high energy. He’s engaging. He talks about life. ‘If I can help you be a better person, I can help you be a better football player,’” Ingram said. “He just had a very different approach.”

In 2023, Dilfer won four games and avoided embarrassing losses but lost three conference games by more than 20 points in the far more difficult American, where UAB is taking on programs with better rosters and more well-funded teams and athletic departments.

He mostly avoided unflattering headlines, too.

This season, compounding the on-field struggles, was a different story.

In September, he granted his grandson’s request to sit with him at the table for a sparsely attended news conference following a 41-18 loss to Navy.

“There’s like two (reporters),” Dilfer said into the microphone. “It’s not like this is freakin’ Alabama.”

Few were in the room, but thousands viewed the clip online. UAB has a somewhat fraught relationship with Alabama, which is also part of the University of Alabama System, and some fans were upset. 

Dilfer’s full thought, he relayed to others, was a reference that the media contingent wasn’t like the crush of reporters that would be present at Alabama’s game against Georgia, also played that night.

Ingram told The Athletic it was the kind of mistake that is magnified because UAB’s program was struggling on the field.

Two days later, asked about the incident by UAB fan and podcast host John Duncan at a weekly news conference, Dilfer asked if Duncan had attended. He had not. Duncan asked if Dilfer knew the program’s history and Dilfer said he was “very aware” of it.

“A lot of UAB fans are still paranoid about the board of trustees after the 2014 shutdown and that it’s out to get UAB. You just can’t say something like that,” Duncan said. “I gave him the chance to elaborate or say what he really meant. If he had said what he meant about Alabama and Georgia, the fan base might have cooled down.

“But that was the moment the fan base directly turned on Trent Dilfer.”

A week later, on a podcast that the university produces weekly featuring Dilfer and Ingram, Dilfer made an impromptu recruiting pitch for Louisville volleyball, where his daughter played.

“If you want to play big-time college volleyball go to Louisville,” Dilfer said.

“Or UAB,” Ingram interjected.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. … I will say this, they’re (recruiting) from different buckets, Mark.”

Dilfer told The Athletic he was answering a question about a coach who had influenced him and he was pointing to Louisville coach Dani Busboom Kelly, who impressed Dilfer with how she built the program’s culture while leading the Cardinals to national runner-up finishes twice in the past three seasons. UAB volleyball has gone 16-43 in the last two seasons.

“What I wish I would have said is Betsy Freeburg, the head volleyball coach at UAB, and I are very good friends and one of my daughters almost came down to play for her,” Dilfer said. “I wish I could go back in time and realize that when you’re losing, as I always say, I don’t like my kids, my food sucks and my wife’s not as hot. Everybody else is experiencing that, too, and everything that isn’t a positive will be interpreted as a hyper-negative, and that was never the intent.”

Both incidents built upon a perception among some fans that Dilfer saw himself as above the program, something Dilfer said athletic department officials helped him understand in late November as criticism continued to mount.

“Of all the things I’ve heard said about me, that has probably hurt the most,” he said. “Because I wish I could spend time with those people. I love this opportunity and love this city. I have no ambition of doing anything what others would perceive as ‘bigger’ than this. This is the big time.”

The season’s obvious struggles included ugly losses such as 72-10 to Tulane and 44-18 to Army in successive weeks in October. Dilfer called the home loss to the Green Wave “humiliating,” took the blame and said the city of Birmingham deserved better.

The team’s wins came against FCS-level Alcorn State, Tulsa and Rice, but Dilfer found other positives in the season.

Dilfer said coaches from each of the Blazers’ final five opponents approached him on the field before the game and said his team was playing its best football, and they were “so close” and impressed by his team’s physical approach.

“There’s nothing better to me than an opposing coach complimenting a team’s effort,” Dilfer said.

A week after the loss to Army, UAB led bowl-bound USF 9-7 at the half before losing 35-25. It led Tulsa 45-7 at halftime in a 59-21 rout. It led nine-win UConn 20-3 at halftime before giving up 21 fourth-quarter points in a 31-23 loss. It trailed conference power Memphis 18-8 at halftime before a 53-18 loss. Rice didn’t score in the final three quarters of UAB’s 40-14 win.


UAB suffered a loss against Army and running back Kanye Udoh during its six-game losing streak. (Danny Wild / Imagn Images)

UAB closed its season on Nov. 30 with a 29-27 loss to Charlotte after Jonah Delange, one of the nation’s most accurate kickers, hooked the 27-yard game-winning field goal attempt left, and Charlotte players spilled onto the field in celebration.

UAB finished 2-6 in league play. UTSA in 2023 remains the only one of the six programs that moved from Conference USA to the AAC in 2023 to have a season above .500 in conference play.

Dilfer said he didn’t want it to be an excuse, but his initial plan for success at UAB has shifted as the sport’s rosters have grown more transient with the advent of immediate eligibility for transfers and NIL

“It’s a little bigger challenge than I had anticipated because of the lack of time under tension with the same people,” Dilfer said. “Anything great is built through time under tension with the same people.”

However, all the roster upheaval in college sports is not a uniquely UAB problem.

Dilfer said he looks back and sees “30 decisions” he wishes he could have back, but said that would probably still be the case if he was presiding over a winning program.

He said the culture of his program was compromised by external factors, “conflicting agendas” and “non-winning things” seeping into the facility. He didn’t elaborate.

“As a leader, you have to be able to recognize mistakes in real time and fix them faster than I’ve fixed them,” he said.

“Winning is about inches and I’ve allowed us to lose too many of those inches,” he said. “I know that from here on out, the people in this building will have the same agenda.”

The offense ranked 79th in yards per play last year, down from 28th in 2023. The defense improved to 79th in yards per play from 112th a season ago.

Said Terell McDonald, a fifth-year tight end who stuck around through the coaching transitions: “He’s the definition of a players’ coach. Him being at the highest level and knowing what he knows, he gives us little insights and things. I’ve learned a lot from him from a different perspective. He’s a different, more hands-on type of coach. He’ll get out there and show you what he’s trying to teach you.”

Ingram and Dilfer both pointed to a plan when it was announced that Dilfer would be back.

Dilfer fired defensive coordinator Sione Ta’ufo’ou, who came with him from Lipscomb Academy, and three more position coaches won’t return. Ta’ufo’o had never coached in college football before Dilfer brought him in. He was one of seven of Dilfer’s on-field staffers who had never been a coordinator or position coach at an FBS program before Dilfer hired them.

For many fans who initially questioned the hires, Curtis said, Dilfer making a change two years later feels like an admission the criticism was correct.

Last month, Dilfer brought Steve Russ to UAB as defensive coordinator from Air Force, where he was working as special assistant to head coach Troy Calhoun. Before that, he coached linebackers with the Washington Commanders for four seasons and had been defensive coordinator at Air Force and Syracuse earlier in his career.

After the season was complete, Dilfer spent a few days meeting one-on-one with players. He opened the floor and let them know nothing they said would be held against them. The biggest criticism they had for him, Dilfer said, was they needed him to be fiercer.

“Which shocks me,” Dilfer said. “That I’ve done a 180 and overcorrected. When we recognize a flaw in ourselves and are willing to grow as humans, we overcorrect that because we don’t like it about ourselves. I didn’t like that I would lose my cool. I would lose my poise at times.”

In 2021, a video of him shoving and yelling at a player during a Lipscomb win went viral. He later apologized. In 2023, he called an outburst at a staffer during a loss to Tulane “regretful.”

“And my players have said no, ‘You’re the juice man. You’re the energy. You’re the passion. We feed off you.’ And it’s not just game day. It’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Bring it. Part of that has been freeing. But now the challenge for me is finding the balance in what used to be a fault and the overcorrection and find that God-given piece in the middle that’s my best.”

In this era of college football, though, teams’ year-to-year fates are largely decided by which players they keep and which they lose. There are always surprises when mining the portal, but UAB’s roster appears to have lost more than it gained. There is a September trip to Tennessee. And UAB is still playing in a new conference with deeper pockets and deeper rosters.

Will 2025 be different? Or will the number of people around Birmingham who are with Dilfer continue to dwindle? Dilfer’s contract extends through 2027. After next season, the buyout drops to $2.4 million.

“They’ve gotten my best effort. But effort isn’t enough,” he said. “Now, they’re going to get my best humility because I’ve been humbled. … This setback has reset me in a good way, and now they’re gonna get my best fix.”

 (Top photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)



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